Holiday

With “city” in the band's name, Sentimental City Romance seemed almost destined to bring a West Coast sound out of Nagoya. Holiday, their second album, catches them while that sound was at its most refined. Their unaffected manner acquires just enough urban air to turn light, mellow songs into something distinctive.

“Romance Koro” is especially lovely: a carefully detailed sound, an electric piano that rolls through the arrangement and the sort of dreamy chorus this band could make its own. The soft dusk of the record never becomes sleepy, either. “Asobikko” has a more social, streetwise groove, the kind that gets your shoulders moving before you notice.